A Front Cover Analysed

 

             

Reflection

In order for a magazine to be successful, all of its design elements need to be be focused upon meeting the expectations of your chosen target audience. Every magazine has a target audience which is the audience that their specific magazine would interest best and therefore they chose language, colour, font and images which will attract that target audience.

The target audience is split two ways, into demographics and phsycographics. Demographics refer to statistical data such as age, gender etc whereas phsycographics refer to an individual being categorised based on their opinions and interests. By understanding your audiences demographics it can help you find the best way to get your media out to your target audience e.g. via social media or newspapers. It is not only important to understand who your target audience is but also why they are your target audience.  This is where physcographics are useful to determine what type of content will interest your target audience based on their interests.

By analysing a magazine cover it has allowed me to research into different aspects of the design and think about why these specific colours, fonts, images and language has been chosen in order to meet their chosen target audience. The designers use technical design conventions in order to get messages across and appeal to their audience.

I chose to annotate a pop magazine cover to link in with my ‘pop’ genre which I have been focusing on. In my chosen magazine cover, as stated in my analysis, the designer has used the cover star image to be the main attraction for this magazine cover as Billboards target audience is stated to be younger generations who would appeal more to pictures rather than a magazine full of essays. Therefore they have chosen to use limited writing only presenting the main cover lines in bold fonts to make them stand out and therefore be a easy read for the audience.

Focusing forward

This task will help me when going forward and thinking about my own music magazine cover as it will make me ensure that all of my design elements link together to meet my target audiences expectations. If my magazine is not designed to meet one chosen design audience and includes elements to please multiple age groups and genders then it will not be successful as it will not attract enough readers.

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